I Didn't Know I Was Intersex — Until I Made a Film About an Intersex Character

Sitting in the backseat of my family’s Toyota SUV with my older brother and sister, I watched my mother apply her mascara in the passenger seat while my father quietly drove. I had always marveled at the way she could put on makeup in the car; at her practicality and glamour. But on that day, I noticed her typically steady hands were shaking. We were on our way to the doctor’s appointment that would change the course of my life as I — a chubby 12-year-old boy from Jersey — knew it.

My family and I sat motionlessly on pleather chairs in the waiting room. It was a strange gathering — I was the only kid who had an appointment, so I didn’t understand why my parents dragged the entire family to the doctor with me. My health seemed perfectly fine, save for the lump forming in the back of my throat.

“Your testicles were absent at your birth,” confessed my doctor in an examination room that reeked of off-brand Lysol. My stomach turned. I looked to my parents for confirmation: Is he serious? They sat in the corner, sad and small. My mother buried herself in my father’s shoulder, hiding her watery eyes and running mascara. The doctor told me that I would begin testosterone injections immediately in order to start puberty. As part of his “treatment plan,” he informed me that in a few years, at age 16, I would undergo plastic surgery to get prosthetic testicles surgically implanted in my empty scrotum. He reassured me that in time I’d look and feel like a normal man. I had no say in any of this.

I was devastated — pissed at my parents for keeping this a secret, and upset at my doctor for his clinical way of revealing the truth about my body, with no mention of how it would impact me psychologically or resources to help me adequately process this new information. In hindsight, the most shocking part of this appointment was that my doctor didn’t tell me that there were other people like me: people who are born with a reproductive and/or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of female or male.

From that moment on, my body was constantly objectified and put on display by the medical community. I can’t count how many times I had to strip down to be examined by doctors. When I was 13, a doctor brought group of his medical students to my examination. Each one of them took pictures of my body without my consent.

Experiences like mine are common for intersex people around the world. Vulnerable and scared parents adamantly follow doctors’ orders to “normalize” our bodies with unnecessary surgeries — removing or adding to our natural anatomies and pumping us with “corrective” hormones without consulting us about how we identify or how we feel. They fail to understand that gender, sex, and sexuality occur on a spectrum. Furthermore, doctors perpetuate the false idea that ‘no one is like us,’ — that we are not normal — keeping us in cycles of shame and immense loneliness. In fact, 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 people are intersex — it’s as common as having naturally red hair. Statistically, it’s likely that there is someone in your own community who is intersex but is perhaps too scared to be public about their identity (and understandably so).

It wasn’t until last year, while doing research for my film Ponyboi — about an intersex Latinx runaway and sex worker — that I discovered the term intersex existed. In writing the film, I knew that I wanted the root cause of the abuse the main character experiences, as well as his resulting pain to stem from a lack of acceptance of his “abnormal” body. I had the sudden impulse to google my condition while writing, wondering if there was new information available online to inform my character. As fate would have it, I found a crucial part of who I am reflected back to me via the media: a BuzzFeed video featuring intersex activist Pidgeon talking about being intersex. Then, a Vogue article about supermodel Hanne Gaby Odiele coming out as intersex. Oh shit! I thought, reeling with excitement. This is not only something people are talking about openly, but something they proudly own as their identity! I felt a palpable surge of love and pride for my body for the first time.

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Being an actor and filmmaker, I create confessionary art that celebrates secrets and exorcises shame; I make art that addresses the politics of personhood through narratives of my own personal conflicts. Before last year, only my family and close friends knew about my intersex condition. To me, it was a weird, medical abnormality that was separate from who I believed myself to be. However, publicly owning my intersex body has filled me with a new sense of activism and purpose.

As there is so little media representation of intersex people, Ponyboi — executive produced by Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson — will be the first narrative film directed by and starring an out intersex person in the history of cinema. I hope that the film will make great strides in promoting intersex visibility on an international scale, provide healing to intersex people who will see their own experiences reflected on screen, and also spread empathy towards intersex people within the LGBTQ+ community and beyond.

I’ve come to understand that since I cannot have biological children, the stories I share in my films and my art are the lineage I will pass on. My projects are my babies, so to speak. It is important to me that they find their way into the hearts of people — outsiders, misfits, queerdos — who feel isolated like I did growing up. No one should ever feel ashamed about the way they were born, and I’ve made it my mission to fix that.

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